As I write this, I’m thinking about the gear I’ll pack for Apple’s WWDC 2024 event (laptop, tablet, phone(s), camera, mics). The keynote is on Monday, and a good chunk of the TechRadar team has been thinking and writing about it all week – and I think our Mobiles Editor Roland Moore-Coyler gets closest to summing up our expectations in the piece linked below: Apple will do AI differently.
Oh, did I not mention that AI will be the core focus of Apple’s big developer event in Cupertino, California? Because it will. As Roland surmises, AI will be suffused in all parts of the Apple ecosystem (and touch virtually every product); but our Health, Fitness, and Wearables guru Matt Evans notes somewhat presciently that Apple must do AI differently when it comes to health and protecting our privacy.
Matt’s been busy this week, and he also walks us through the simmering controversy and potential legal battle involving smart-ring pioneer Oura and smart-ring newbie Samsung. I have news for them: there’s room for everyone, and these tech giants should learn to play nice and stop engaging in these nonsense patent wars.
Even so, AI is now like a magnet around here, and even when it’s not working well it draws our attention. Tthe week began with a massive ChatGPT outage – that’s right, even the absence of AI is news. As are the downsides of the tech, which our Computing Editor John Loeffler picked apart in a rant filed from the Computex 2024 show floor about Nvdia’s growing AI plans, and how they might impact our planet. (And don’t try to sell me on off-world life – I just watched the new Alien: Romulus trailer, and I think I’ll stick right here in our neck of the galaxy, thank you very much.)
Enjoy this walk back through the top stories of the week, and don’t forget to check in with us for all the breaking news from WWDC 2024 on Monday.
Lance Ulanoff, Editor-at-Large
The Week in Apple
Apple AI announcements are imminent (Yuganov Konstantin / Shutterstock)
Apple's WWDC 2024 event is almost here, and we're expecting updates on all its software products, including iOS 18 and macOS 15. It's clear that AI will be the star of the show, but we're expecting a few Apple-style twists on the AI chatbots and tools we've seen so far.
We've been reporting from Computex 2024 in Taipei all week, and the event had the feel of Microsoft and Windows PC makers striking back against Apple, showcasing their own speedy, lightweight processors and devices – and the onus is now back on Apple.
The latest ChatGPT video demo shows how the AI bot can create voices for different animal characters from scratch, then use them to tell a story. It's an impressive clip – and it sounds as though Apple will be adding ChatGPT to iOS and Siri next week too.
Smart rings have been around for a while now, but Samsung is the highest-profile tech brand yet to get involved with this product category – and its preemptive legal strike against Oura and its own smart rings suggest things are about to get serious.
Looking for something to stream this weekend? We’ve got plenty of suggestions, including new Star Wars series The Acolyte on Disney Plus, acclaimed Netflix rom-com crime thriller Hit Man, and Max comedy Fantasmas, from the surrealist mind of Julio Torres.
